National Cooperative Highway Research Program

A forum for coordinated and collaborative research, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) addresses issues integral to the state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and transportation professionals at all levels of government and the private sector. The NCHRP provides practical, ready-to-implement solutions to pressing problems facing the industry.

The NCHRP is administered by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and sponsored by the member departments (i.e., individual state departments of transportation) of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Individual projects are conducted by contractors with oversight provided by volunteer panels of expert stakeholders.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volumes 1-6 examines global and domestic long-range, strategic issues and their implications for state departments of transportation. Each volume explores fields as varied as freight movement, climate change, technology adoption, sustainability, fuels and energy, and socio-demographics and explains how events and trends may shape the transportation system of 30-50 years in the future.

NCHRP's 2014 Summary of Progress highlights the more than 141 projects completed in 2014 and includes a listing of nearly 3,000 other projects undertaken by the program since 1962. The Summary of Progress also presents detailed information about the operation of NCHRP through the Standing Committee on Research of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Among the variety of methods the National Cooperative Highway Research Program uses to showcase the value of NCHRP research is a series of success stories titled Impacts on Practice. These brief case studies highlight how transportation agencies have put critical NCHRP research results to use nationwide in the following areas:

NCHRP Reports, Syntheses of Practice, Research Results Digests, Web-Only Documents, and Legal Research Digests contain the findings of individual research projects managed by TRB's Cooperative Research Programs.

Reports: Reports are the main product of the research project and are often written as guidebooks or manuals.

Syntheses of Practice: Syntheses report on the state of the practice based on literature reviews and surveys of recent activities about innovations being used by others to solve problems.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 800: Successful Practices in GIS-Based Asset Management provides guidance for state transportation agencies on using geographic information system (GIS) technologies in transportation asset management (TAM). In addition to the report, the Executive Guide and Implementation Guide are available online.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 468: Interactive Training for All-Hazards Emergency Planning, Preparation, and Response for Maintenance and Operations Field Personnel identifies interactive emergency training tools and sources that may be applied by maintenance and operations field personnel of state departments of transportation and public works agencies. ...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 470: Maintenance Quality Assurance Field Inspection Practices summarizes practices used by state transportation agencies to support maintenance investments. Appendices A and B are only available through the online PDF document.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 466: Alliance Contracting—Evolving Alternative Project Delivery synthesizes current practices related to the use of alliance contracts around the world, and explores the procurement procedures that have been used to successfully implement alliance contracting on typical transportation projects.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Web-Only Document 211: Close To Home: A Handbook for Transportation-Efficient Growth in Small Communities and Rural Areas provides a vocabulary of land use characteristics in small communities and rural areas. It also estimates the per person change in daily driving after hypothetical growth occurs according to different development vi...

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Board (NCHRP) Synthesis 469: Impacts of Energy Developments on U.S. Roads and Bridges documents the economic impact of heavy truck traffic related to energy development on the nation’s roads and bridges.